REMEMBERING THE HOLOCAUSTWHILE FIGHTING ANTI-SEMITISM

HON. CHRISTOPHER H. SMITH

OF NEW JERSEY

Wednesday, February 1, 2006

Mr. Speaker, the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camps is often selected as the day to honor those murdered at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators. More than one million people were killed at Auschwitz before the survivors were liberated on January 27, 1945. Appropriately, each January 27, individuals and governments around the world pause to remember those individuals murdered by the Nazis during the Holocaust. Also known as the Sho'ah, Hebrew for "calamity," the Holocaust witnessed the death of six million Jews by the Nazi killing machine, many of them in concentration camps or elsewhere in a web that stretched throughout the heart of Europe. Millions of individuals--political dissidents, Jehovah's Witnesses, those with disabilities, and others including entire Romani families--also perished at the hands of the Nazis.

Holocaust Remembrance Day also celebrates those brave souls who faced unimaginable horrors and lived to tell of their experiences. In a historic first, late last year the United Nations designated January 27 as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Initial drafters of the resolution--Australia, Canada, Israel, Russia and the United States--were joined by 100 nations in sponsoring the resolution in the General Assembly. Other international organizations, like the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), have done much to ensure the lessons of the Holocaust are taught in schools across Europe, including the former Soviet Union. In addition, the Belgian Chair-in-Office of the OSCE held a commemorative event for Holocaust victims on January 27 in Brussels.

Unfortunately, while the Holocaust is rightly remembered, its lessons have yet to be fully learned. Early on, the world said "Never Again" to genocide, only to allow genocide to happen again in Bosnia-Herzegovina and Rwanda in the 1990s, and in Darfur today. The establishment of international tribunals to seek justice in response to these crimes may indicate some progress, but the best way to honor the lives of those who died during the Holocaust or in subsequent genocides would be to have the resolve to take decisive action to try to stop the crime in the first place.

Some heads of state refuse to recognize even the existence of the Holocaust. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the President of Iran, made the outrageous claim on December 14 that Europeans had "created a myth in the name of Holocaust." Showing his virulent anti-Semitic nature, two months earlier in October, he said Israel is "a disgraceful blot" that should be "wiped off the map." While Ahmadinejad's anti-Semitic hate is shocking, other hate mongers have physically attacked Jews. In early January, a knife-wielding skinhead shouting "I will kill Jews" and "Heil Hitler" burst into a Moscow synagogue and stabbed at least eight worshippers. A copycat attack followed in Rostov-on-Don, with the attacker thankfully being stopped inside the synagogue before anyone was hurt.

As Co-Chairman of the U.S. Helsinki Commission, I have worked over the past four years with other Members of Congress and parliamentarians from around the world to fight anti-Semitism. I was pleased to have either authored or cosponsored three resolutions at the OSCE Parliamentary Assembly, which condemned anti-Semitism, while also being a principal sponsor to the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act that passed the Congress and was signed into law by President Bush in 2004. Internationally, the OSCE has held three international meetings focusing on anti-Semitism and has pledged to hold another major conference in Romania in 2007.

Mr. Speaker, while our struggle continues, we have made progress, moving governments and international organizations to begin to act. To reverse Edmund Burke's truism, what is necessary for the triumph of good over evil is for good men and women to take action.